Stockholm Syndrome
by Erendis Black
Summary: Suddenly, he had it all figured out, all of it, and he was finally going to play Axel’s game, even if he only had one shot at it. [AxelRoxas, AU] Axel has a memory fixation and Roxas gets a little frustrated.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Kingdom Hearts _nor any of the characters featured therein. I just borrow them for my personal recreation and, hopefully, yours. Now, if I _did_ own them, I'd be a very happy fangirl.

**Warnings:** Shounen-ai. One-shot. High school AU. Disguised clichés.

**Notes: **Gift fic for hizachan at LJ. She wanted pretty boys making out agains their lockers and I aim to please.

**More notes:** The title is mildly inspired by the Muse song of the same name and by the actual psychological response called _Stockholm Syndrome_, of which you can find out more about at Wikipedia. It's nothing quite so bad here, but as I said... inspired.

* * *

If you had asked him today how he liked his life, Roxas would have told you that he liked it well enough. True, his parents were quite absent from his life and that had bothered him in the past, classes got annoying sometimes and life in general got a bit boring, but all in all he was happy with it. In fact, if given the choice, there was only one thing he would have fixed from his daily life. One slightly irritating thing that made his days less than perfect, even in its infinite insignificance.

"Roxas? Here he comes." Olette and her warnings only made him more nervous, really. Still, Roxas nodded and planted his feet a bit more firmly on the floor, clutched his backpack a bit more tightly and waited. Sure enough, there came the hand to the middle of his back, followed by the none too gentle push in the general direction of the lockers directly in front of him. Used to it, Roxas didn't stumble nor got smashed against the cold metal as the hand surely intended, but the shove had only been truly aggressive during the first month. Now that wasn't necessary anymore. The message had been sent and received, loud and clear, just like everyday. Some mornings, like today, the pusher would even spare an extra effort to greet Roxas as he went by.

"Morning, kid! Memorized your schedule yet?"

And when Roxas turned, bypassing Olette's worried frown, Pence's sympathetic smile and Hayner's growling, he immediately located the source of the voice and the shove: a tall redhead that walked amply by, parting the crowd of students as he went and waving a lazy hand in Roxas' direction. If he strained, Roxas knew he'd even catch the glimpse of a smirk on his nemesis face.

"Good morning to you too, Axel."

··························

Axel was the kind of guy every kid in the neighborhood got warned against by parents and friends: wild hairdos, tattoos, cigarettes and questionable company. He was a trouble magnet, it seemed; though he could be a charmer when he felt like wiggling out of trouble, too. A sharp wit, quick smirk and some winking were just a few lethal weapons in Axel's inventory. However –or possibly because of it—girls left and right nursed year-long crushes on him and every guy on a thirty mile radius wanted to stay on his good side, while teachers and most adults just shook their heads and wished he would calm down soon.

Roxas had never had much contact with Axel other than the daily shove that went by between them, every morning since Axel had started his senior year. The first time it had happened, Roxas had been completely puzzled; what reason could this guy have to randomly lash out to an unknown junior? Later on, he had been angry about it, then confused again, then he had resigned himself to it. Eventually, Hayner had convinced him he should stand up to this spiky-haired jerk, so Roxas had tried. The results had been definitely strange.

"Don't do that, will you? What's your problem?" That had been Roxas' way of dealing with it, one particularly nasty morning when the shove had been the last thing he needed. He remembered feeling angry enough for a fistfight, if that's what Axel wanted to go for. But nothing much had happened.

The other students around them had gone eerily silent, a sense of expectancy hanging in the air. Fort he first time since he had started it, Axel had turned around and faced his victim, pinning him to the spot with bright green eyes. Roxas wasn't that much shorter than him, but he had felt distinctly so, under that intense stare down. It had gone on for the longest time until Axel had finally spoken.

"Why shouldn't I, kid? What will you do?" But the tone had not been hostile, nor challenging, merely mocking and a bit bored. Then it had dawned on Roxas that it was a game; Axel was toying with him, looking for a particular response. Well, Roxas refused to play. After that, the younger boy had gone through several phases: more anger, simple annoyance, need of revenge, some angsty moping and recently, his studied passiveness. Hayner still seethed in Roxas' behalf, Pence and Olette wanted him to go to a teacher, but Roxas was determined to be a good sport about it. Soon he would figure out what response Axel wanted and then they would play on equal footing.

However, time seemed to be running out. In four months Axel would graduate and the daily shoving would be over. Roxas preferred not to dwell on this too much, as it made him feel a twinge of strange regret, an awkward near-sadness that he didn't fully comprehend, nor he really wanted to.

Now, he allowed himself to be dragged to their first class by a chattering Pence, still lost on Axel-related thoughts and still slightly upset at himself for them.

··························

His chance to understanding Axel's behavior came a month or so later, as Roxas found himself running late for homeroom.

"Dammit, dammit, come on, you stupid thing!" Roxas looked at his watch and cursed some more at his locker's combination, which had never been user friendly in his opinion. Finally, it clicked open and Roxas started to pull books out and cramming them into his backpack, then he slammed the door shut again and fumbled the lock code, still cursing profusely.

"My, my, still having trouble memorizing your code, kid?"

Roxas froze; if the voice hadn't been a dead give-away as for whom was standing right behind him, the words certainly were.

"What do you want?" he lashed out, unconcerned that they were virtually alone on the empty hallway. He turned around and tried to zip up his bag, look defiant and act nonchalant all at the same time.

Axel peeled himself from the line of lockers across Roxas' own and moved closer to the blond boy, heavy footfalls resonating ominously all along the vacant corridor. Roxas swung his backpack over his shoulder and looked up to Axel for the first time. The smirk was firmly in place, lopsided and cruel, and his eyes were narrowed to slits, giving Roxas the impression of an oversized cat closing in on his prey. Still, he felt daring, more so than when he was surrounded by friends.

"If you came for your daily shoving shit, you can wait until lunch break, I'm really late now," and Roxas made his first mistake, as he tried to duck aside and make his escape. An iron-grip hand closed around Roxas' much slender left arm, holding him back as he got slammed on to his own locker.

"I can have that now, if I want," the leering mouth said as Axel braced both his hands on the lockers at each side of Roxas' face, effectively trapping him and giving him no room to escape as the other leaned in, closer and closer. Roxas made his second mistake then, as he looked up and met Axel's eyes.

For a moment, nothing happened. Roxas thought he should be feeling afraid, perhaps, but he wasn't. He thought he should want to move away and get to a classroom as fast as possible, but he didn't. All he could do—or wanted to do—was to stay exactly where he was and study the dark flecks adorning green, green irises, or muse over the oddly-shaped tattoos marring Axel's skin, right under his eyes. But then, before Roxas could even draw his next breath, Axel was moving aside, walking away, all black clothes and red, red hair.

"Get lost, kid."

"My name is Roxas!" he called to the dark figure's retreating back, frustrated and angry and so annoyed with himself, he could barely summon his voice.

"I know!" was the unexpected response, accompanied by a chuckle and the loud bang of a door, as Axel disappeared into a classroom.

··························

Roxas kept that particular episode to himself, even if normally he would have shared it with his three best friends, mostly because he could not make much sense of it, in the same way he could barely make sense of Axel himself. Ever since the incident, however, the daily shoving had stopped to the great shock of everyone.

"Roxas, what did you do?"

"Roxas, that's so great man!"

"It's the calm before the storm, Roxas."

"Never mind, he must've gotten bored with it."

"Finally! I swear, I was thinking of—"

Roxas let his friends carry on about it, because frankly, it was better that way; everyone could make conjectures instead of asking questions he didn't have answers for. Still, whenever someone mentioned how glad he must be, he felt strangely disappointed, stupidly inane about it all.

"Maybe you're a masochist," his older brother said, half-jokingly, when Roxas finally snapped and told him that he wasn't throwing a party just because one bully had gotten bored and probably moved on to someone else.

"Don't get mad, Roxas. I'm sure everyone will forget about it soon enough," were his brother's last words of comfort and while Roxas was dubious at first, he was forced to admit that yes, everyone eventually let it go. Never mind that at the very back of Roxas' mind, a pair of green eyes framed in red kept taunting him and haunting his every step.

_You still don't get it, kid._

··························

"Roxas, you said you'd get it! Don't tell me you forgot!"

"I have it, Olette, I do. Just… not here, okay?"

The graduating ceremony for the senior class was over. Roxas could see his own brother flanked by his two best friends, getting congratulated over and over by family and friends. Olette's cousin was graduating, too, and as Roxas and her would be meeting there, he had promised her to return a book she had lent him a few months ago.

"Then where is it?"

"I think it's in my locker, because it wasn't at home," he explained to his friend. Olette crossed her arms over her chest and gave him the flattest stare she could muster.

"Well, go get it, then."

"What, now?"

"Yes, now!"

So he went and retrieved the book, uncomfortable by the vacant and silent feeling the school building gave him, as he walked its darkened hallways. The noises from outside coming through very muffled and faint; the soft click from his locker's door echoed loudly around him.

"Got that memorized, didn't you?"

Roxas closed his eyes; the feeling of déjà vu was so overwhelming he nearly felt like laughing out loud. He turned to face his captor, probably for the last time in his life, and opened his mouth without knowing what he was going to say.

"I saw you out there. Congratulations," he offered, hating himself for saying something so generic, so irrelevant.

Axel laughed, a harsh sound that Roxas disliked immediately, and raked a hand through his hair, messing it even more. "Bet you thought I wouldn't graduate in a million years."

"No, I know you're smart enough," Roxas shook his head, book clutched tightly in his right hand; truthfully, he had never considered whether Axel would graduate or not, even if half the school was opinionated about it. He looked up, studying the other guy—without the ceremony robes, he looked just like he always did—and wondering why the heck had he just complimented and congratulated the guy that had bullied him for the entire school year.

"You think I'm smart, huh?" Axel smirked and moved towards the center of the corridor, just as Roxas, too, started to move away from the row of lockers, slowly and unconsciously, as if pulled by strings. "What else do you think, Roxas?" the redhead asked in a velvety voice, tilting his head to the side and moving even closer.

Roxas took a deep breath. " I think you went about this the wrong way," he said. Suddenly, he had it all figured out, all of it, and he was finally going to play Axel's game, even if he only had one shot at it. He readied himself for it, ignoring the wild beating of his heart, the sweat on his palms and the way Axel was smiling at him. Not the predatory, cruel smirk, but a simple, open smile that did reach his eyes.

"The wrong way, eh? Well, time to change tact, then," Roxas heard him say before everything became a blur of touch, smell and taste.

The younger boy was, again, violently shoved on to the lockers behind him, but this time it didn't matter because he was being kissed so thoroughly, his brain refused to engage in any other sensory input. Olette's book clattered to the floor, but it didn't matter which way it landed, because there were hands on Roxas' hips and there were fingers pressing at the small of his back, and all while Axel's tongue tried to find every hidden recess in his mouth and test Roxas' attention span, because it felt like he was being touched everywhere that mattered, all at once.

When Roxas' hands found their way into the red, red hair, he knew that the whole of the school building with all the people in it could have melted away, because Roxas' whole life felt like a prelude to this and this was just the beginning. He felt it when Axel pulled him more firmly against his body and the friction then made Roxas gasp aloud, in a way that sounded more like a moan, but what did it matter--the end was so far away he couldn't really see it. In the haze of inhaling Axel's scent—hot metal and burnt matches—Roxas knew there would be a long, long way to go before this could, or would, happen.

Reality settled in, at some point after Roxas' pants' button had come undone and some suspicious markings had appeared on the pale skin of Axel's neck. A door banged shut somewhere else in the school and Roxas became aware of the soreness of his lips, the emptiness of the hallway and the wild, feral look on Axel's green, green eyes.

"A year from now, where will you be?" Axel's voice was still the same, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, and that drawling cadence would haunt Roxas' dreams for months to come.

"I'll be here," Roxas said, honestly, bending to retrieve the forgotten book; his voice sounded strange to his own ears. When he straightened up, Axel had moved away. Too far away, Roxas' mind opined, and he looked again cold and dangerous, like a big cat.

"Then we might see each other again, kid," he said, a hand to his hip and a quick wink before he started to walk away, melting into the shadows of the darkened hall.

"It's Roxas. You should memorize it."

If the truly amused laughter that reached Roxas' ears was really Axel's, then only the lockers and a blond haired kid were the sole witnesses to it, before another door clanked shut and there was silence again.

··························

"Here's the book, Olette."

"Oh, there you are. I thought—" Olette blinked, looking Roxas up an down, appraisingly. "What happened to you?" she asked, taking in the rumpled clothing and the extra messy hair.

"Axel," Roxas said, simply. He will not tell her about the faint ache in the back of his head where it hit the lockers, nor will he tell her about the bruises that were probably forming on his upper arms, or about how he could still felt his lips burning from the other's touch. Not now at any rate, not yet.

Maybe a year from now.

* * *


End file.
